P. Lains, L. F. Costa, R. Grafe, A. Herranz-Loncán, D. Igual-Luis, V. Pinilla and H. V. Vilar (eds.), An Economic History of The Iberian Peninsula, 700–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024). Pages xvi + 791 + figures 79 + tables 50. £150.00 hardback.

A small proportion of the migrants who left Ireland between the 1950s and early 1990s chose Australia as their destination. This chapter examines oral history interview transcripts from two different archives of people from Ireland who migrated during that time period. The transcripts give a richly textured account of the experiences of these migrants who settled in Perth, Western Australia. The archives were gathered for different purposes and at different times, two decades apart; however, there is much overlap in their subject matter. The chapter uses extensive quotes from the interviews to focus on two themes: the many interconnecting and reinforcing reasons that underpinned the decision to migrate and the diverse factors which influenced the process of settling in Australia. Importantly, the transcripts reveal the incremental nature of the emigration process and the gradual change these migrants experienced in their sense of identity and understanding of home. Rather than choosing one or other place, most enlarged their concept of home to encompass Australia and experienced an extended sense of an Irish and an Australian identity.

This chapter provides a unique insight into the experiences of immigrants from Ireland who arrived in Australia between 2000 and 2015, in that it was the first study to obtain a national perspective from respondents located across Australia. Prior to this, all other studies of the Irish in Australia had been location specific, focusing on a single city or state. It was also methodologically innovative, using social media to recruit survey respondents. The ‘Irish in Australia’ survey was conducted between November 2014 and May 2015 and yielded a total 1,049 eligible responses. In-depth interviews were undertaken between December 2014 and November 2015 with 54 people, a sub-set of the survey respondents, who migrated to Australia and later settled. Key themes explored in this chapter are the factors that motivated respondents to travel to Australia including migration enablers such as economic factors, age, education, employment, migration intentions, and the visa pathways used. The chapter concludes that many of the Irish in Australia were accidental immigrants who left Ireland not intending to stay there.

D. Menjot, M. Caesar, F. Garnier and P. Verdés Pijuan (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Public Taxation in Medieval Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 2023). Pages xiv + 497. £152.00 hardback. - Volume 39 Issue 2

Lori Jones (ed.), Disease and the Environment in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds (London and New York: Routledge, 2022). ISBN 9780367151720. Pages 230 + figures 9, £26.24 paperback and Ebook, £97.50 hardback.

Margherita Zanasi, Economic Thought in Modern China: Market and Consumption, c. 1500–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Pages xiv + 239. £79.99 hardback + £29.99 paperback. - Volume 38 Issue 3

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Abstract The intensive culture of secrecy and censorship in postwar Soviet society was enabled by bureaucracies such as Glavlit, the principal agency for censorship, but also by a secondary level of ‘parasitic bureaucracy’ involving institutions and paperwork which drew lifeblood from the core regime of secrecy but had no reason to exist otherwise. In highlighting everyday secrecy at the office (through the ‘first departments’ responsible for workplace secrecy) and in libraries (in the work of special storage units for censored books), this article shows how this parasitic bureaucratic culture of secrecy prioritised the regulation of knowledge in its material and spatial forms.